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Topic: Alamy search doesn't work well (Read 3481 times)

I am wondering why I don't get any sales and now I see. When I search on the Alamy front page with keywords, it fails to bring up my images even though I have ALL the keywords I put in the search. I have looked carefully at my images, checked all the keywords are there and yet the search engine fails to show them. This is why I don't get sales I believe because their algorythm fails.

I am wondering why I don't get any sales and now I see. When I search on the Alamy front page with keywords, it fails to bring up my images even though I have ALL the keywords I put in the search. I have looked carefully at my images, checked all the keywords are there and yet the search engine fails to show them. This is why I don't get sales I believe because their algorythm fails.

I am wondering why I don't get any sales and now I see. When I search on the Alamy front page with keywords, it fails to bring up my images even though I have ALL the keywords I put in the search. I have looked carefully at my images, checked all the keywords are there and yet the search engine fails to show them. This is why I don't get sales I believe because their algorythm fails.

Hmm - we're certainly not aware of any errors on this subject.

Of course we'd be happy to investigate further for you but it would mean giving us some details to be able to do so.

Without knowing any details though, we can almost guarantee that there will be a simple explanation for this and it's extremely unlikely that something like this would be happening to the extent where it would be causing you to not make sales.

If you don't want to share details here, just email contributors@alamy.com and the team will be more than happy to help you.

You should note that the Description field at Alamy is NOT searchable. The Title and Keyword fields are the only ones searched. If the place and date are significant to the image they should be included in the keywords.

Our contributor tools are currently being updated and the roll-out will begin soon. This should make it easier to get images annotated with us quickly - aside from a whole bunch of improvements, there will be less mandatory fields to fill in and only one keyword box.

Our contributor tools are currently being updated and the roll-out will begin soon. This should make it easier to get images annotated with us quickly - aside from a whole bunch of improvements, there will be less mandatory fields to fill in and only one keyword box.

Cheers

Alamy[/quote]

A casual comment at the end of this post regard 'one keyword box' in the upcoming tools rollout carries massive implications, especially for existing Alamy contributors.

* How are keywords going to be prioritised in this one keyword box? * Will all keywords have equal strength or will ones at the top of the list carry weight? * What about the ingestion of existing Alamy images? How will my carefully crafted essential keywords and phrases be treated in this new system? * What about the inevitable influx of images from the micro agencies, what measures will be in place to ensure uploaded keywords are not full of spam? Spamming is less easy when you are made to edit your keywords into three categories, but a doddle when there is only one keyword box.

This casual comment (probably not intended as a proper announcement of the new tools) has got me more than a little worried about the future at Alamy.

This is why I don't get sales I believe because their algorythm fails.

I can see many specific examples of where you seem to be missing search opportunities. For example:

I see you have some pictures of second-hand and vintage stuff at a market. But the market isn't named - that pertinent information is missing. So anyone looking for pictures of that market isn't going to find your pictures. I have a two sets of pictures of similar stuff at a particular market which do quite well. And I see from the stats that my pictures of that market are invariably found as a result of specific searches for the name of the market.

Or here is another example: I am looking at your pictures of canal boats. But you haven't included the name of the canal in the caption or the keywords. That's going to be the most important metadata. Otherwise it's just a pretty picture of random boats.

Or your fresly dug potatoes. That's a very useable picture. But those are "new potatoes" in any search. You want those two words next to each other.

In your vintage railway pictures - the railway isn't named.

etc. I don't think you are keywording for editorial.

Looking at your Alamy portfolio - you've currently got 1213 pictures under your name. Perhaps you have more under a different alias. Much of that is wild flowers, trees, abstract bits of wall etc. I doubt that sort of stuff is particularly worth bothering with in an editorial context. It may actually be working against you given how the CTR works. I think that for editorial you are better looking at specifics - the who, what, how, when and why of life, economics etc

ETA: Your pictures are often very nice. But they need to be about useful nouns and adjectives.

Our contributor tools are currently being updated and the roll-out will begin soon. This should make it easier to get images annotated with us quickly - aside from a whole bunch of improvements, there will be less mandatory fields to fill in and only one keyword box.

Will your new engine be able to search for plurals? Or we'll still need to duplicate each and every keyword like "car", "cars"?

Changing keyword priority seems to have worked getting images seen in the search engine but sadly this has made no difference to sales. What I can't understand is my best images (that sell almost every day on SS) are not getting any sales, even now they come up in the search.

« Last Edit: November 28, 2016, 04:37 by Herg »

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gyllens

« Reply #18 on: November 28, 2016, 03:45 »

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keywording and all that. Whats the point when it seems the entire sort-order mix editorial content with creative content? even though there are choices for buyers the default is what most buyers will use and thats a mix of creative/editorial content all the way.This have a derogative effect and looks unprofessional.

keywording and all that. Whats the point when it seems the entire sort-order mix editorial content with creative content? even though there are choices for buyers the default is what most buyers will use and thats a mix of creative/editorial content all the way.This have a derogative effect and looks unprofessional.

The default on several other sites is to mix editorial and commercially available images by default, with options to filter as required.'Creative' on Alamy doesn't mean 'commercially available'. That is a peculiar use of the word 'creative' which is used on some other sites1.That said, I have NO idea what 'creative' means on Alamy. I have one series of editorial images, some images of which are classified as 'creative' and some aren't; all have 'needs PR/no PR' indicated. Looking at other images within my port, I can't work it out at all.1[OT]And indeed the few iS editorial files which have been mirrored to Getty are not being sold as Editorial on Getty, but are being sold as 'creative' but with 'editorial use only' indicated, which IMO is totally counter-intuitive and a shot-in-the-foot move. These files will not be seen by those who want to search for Editorial, but will potentially annoy people searching for so-called 'creative' (which usually means 'commercially available' on Getty) files, then find these images can't be used. That is taking 'unprofessional' to a whole new level.